The Bible As Justification for Child Abuse

One of the many evils of the Bible is the manner in which it provides parents citing "deeply held religious belief" justification for what is nothing less than child abuse.  This abuse ranges from physical beatings, deprivation of medical treatment, forced "ex-gay" conversion, to a treatment of children as little better than chattel property.  Sadly, Republicans not only are OK with such abuse but in some states are seeking to expand protections for parents who ought to be criminally prosecuted. A piece in Salon looks at this foul aspect of the Bible and conservative Christians.  Here are highlights:

Why do the same people who fight against abortion argue that parents should have the right to beat their children and deny them medical care or education, as some conservative Republicans have done recently? How can someone oppose family planning because a pill or IUD might have the rare and unintended consequence of interfering with implantation, and then endorse beating a child, which might have the rare and unintended consequence of battering her to death?

These two positions fit together seamlessly only when we understand the Iron Age view of the child imbedded throughout the Bible, and how that view has shaped the priorities and behavior of biblical literalists.

In 2014, Pentecostal parents Herbert and Catherine Schaible went to jail after a second of their nine children died from easily treatable bacterial pneumonia. The Schaibles belong to a sect that relies on prayer for physical as well as spiritual healing. In a police statement, Herbert Schiable explained that medicine “is against our religious beliefs.” 

Most devout Bible believers turn to science when their children can’t breathe, but 38 US states have now passed laws to protect parents who don’t—along with parents who beat their children in accordance with biblical advice, or deny them education on religious grounds.

[L]egislators in multiple states are looking to expand laws that exempt parents like the Schaibles from criminal charges. Georgia recently introduced legislation that appears to offer legal cover to parents who beat their children (and men who beat their wives) for religious reasons. In Idaho, despite more than a dozen child deaths linked to one small sect called the Followers of Christ, Republican state legislators introduced a bill in February granting parents broader leeway to harm children—as long as their motives are religious.  

Since the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, conservative Christians in the U.S. are testing “religious freedom” claims as a means to opt out of a wide array of rules and responsibilities that otherwise apply to all Americans. . . . . exemption from child rights and protections should be thought of as a fourth leg of the “religious freedom” agenda.

Devout Bible believers regularly oppose child protective services, insisting that the right of religious adults to do as they choose trumps the right of children to be free from harm. Evangelical Christian leaders fought the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, making the U.S. one of two countries (along with Somalia) that failed to endorse it. In some U.S. locales, like the State of Virginia, they have sought and won the right to deny children basic education, including the ability to read and write.

In the Iron Age mindset of the Bible writers, children are not individual persons who have their own thoughts, with corresponding rights. Rather, like livestock and slaves, they are possessions of the male head of household, and the biblical framework governing treatment of children is property laws, not individual rights laws.

The term chattelrefers to moveable personal property, economic assets that are not real estate. In the Bible, children, like slaves and livestock, are chattel. Male children grow up to become persons, while females remain chattelthroughout their lives, first as assets of their fathers, then as assets of their husbands.

[T]he biblical formula for parenthood is based on several core assumptions:

§  Children are property of their fathers. This is why God can allow Satan to kill Job’s children  during a wager over Job’s loyalty—and then simply replace them. It is why a man who injures a woman causing her to miscarry must pay her husband for the loss.

§  Children are born bad and must be beaten to keep them from going astray. This mentality combines the idea of original sin because Eve defied God and ate from the Tree of Knowledge, with “spare the rod, spoil the child”admonitions from the book of Proverbs. It is one reason that early Christians believed that Jesus, as the perfect “lamb without blemish” could not have a human father and so added the virgin birth story to the Gospels at the end of the 1st Century.

§  A father’s right of ownership extends even to killing his child. This is why it makes sense for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or Jephthah to sacrifice his daughter, or even God to give his “only begotten son” as a human sacrifice. In the Torah, a man can send his child into battle or sell his child into slavery. The Torah advises that a rebellious son should be put to death.

§  The primary value of adult females is to produce valuable children, meaning male children of known origin. Hence, a female’s virginity is a core part of her economic value. This is why a rapist can be forced to marry the damaged goods in the Torah as is sometimes the case in conservative Islam today, or a female can be stoned for pre-marital sex. In the Hebrew Torah, the wives of the patriarchs send their slave girls to get pregnant by their husbands to up the baby count. In modern America, Evangelical girls attend purity balls and receive promise rings by which they pledge their sexual purity to their fathers until they can be “given in marriage.”

In sum, it is much easier to extrapolate from the biblical worldview to the idea that a parent has the right to beat his child or withhold medical care, or that a teenage sex slave should be forced to bear a child, than to derive the idea that we have a responsibility to bring children into the world under the best of circumstances and to acknowledge their rights as individuals once they arrive. These are fundamentally post-biblical ideas, as is the notion that empowering women to delay or limit childbearing is a positive social good.

For those who are not bound to the priorities of the Iron Age, fetishizing fetal life while hurting and disempowering women or children is morally incoherent.

Roman Catholic Church Doubles Down on Anti-Gay Jihad

While protecting sexual predators and child rapists remains perfectly fine amongst senior members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, anti-bullying laws that might protect gays not to mention gay marriage are deemed would be threats to western civilization.  It is simple more evidence that few groups are more morally bankrupt than the bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and yes, Popes of the Catholic Church.  A piece in the Minneapolis Post looks at Church efforts to defeat proposed anti-bullying laws:.  Here are excerpts:

Calling it an extension of the push to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota, the Catholic Church is urging parishoners to call on lawmakers to reject an anti-bullying law.

According to a column in the Catholic Spirit, the official publication of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the proposed Safe Schools legislation is an “Orwellian nightmare” that would “usurp parental rights” and create “re-education camps.”

The column was written by Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, which represents all Catholics dioceses in the state.

In addition to imposing burdensome legal mandates on parochial schools, the Roman Catholic Church also has argued in communications to parishioners that the law would unfairly discriminate against students who oppose same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights.

At 37 words long, Minnesota’s current anti-bullying statute is frequently described as one of the weakest in the nation. It doesn’t define bullying and harassment or require districts to track or report complaints or mandate efforts toward creating healthy school climates.

The proposed measure is based on the work of a task force appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton in the fall of 2011, after the GOP-dominated Legislature rejected efforts to strengthen the law. A wave of student suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District had drawn wide attention to the bullying issue.

The arguments raised by opponents of the Anoka-Hennepin settlement, most of them religious conservatives and proponents of conversion, or “pray away the gay” therapy, mirror those now being advanced by the archdiocese.  The Catholic Church has gone a step further, however, in linking the issue to same-sex marriage.

“The redefinition of marriage should not be seen as a stand-alone act,” the Catholic Spirit’s March column explained. “It is the harbinger of broader social change aimed at creating gender and sexual ‘freedom’ and breaking down the supposedly repressive social norm of heterosexual monogamy. And it is accompanied by other significant pieces of legislation working their way through Minnesota’s Legislature that should be resisted just as vigorously as same-sex ‘marriage.’”

Michael Bayly, director of Catholics for Marriage Equality,  is also the author of “Creating Safe Environments for LGBT Students: A Catholic Schools Perspective.” He disagrees with the archdiocese’s position, but said he understands it.  “I think they are frightened that their teaching on homosexuality is going to be seen as putting people in danger,” Bayly said. “And I think a good case can be made for that. They are in a bind.”

“The archdiocese has done nothing to sit down and problem-solve what would be best for kids,” Dibble concluded. “The truth is bullying is a problem we have to solve. It happens every day and it is a real problem.”

On the issue of gay marriage, the main source of hysteria among the bitter old queens in dresses, even more foul batshitery was on view in Rhode Island where Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of the Diocese of Providence issued a screed aimed at intimidating the Rhode Island Senate which is poised to vote on a gay marriage bill.  Here are highlights from the Providence Journal:

 "As the Rhode Island Senate prepares to take action on legislation that would seek to legitimize 'same-sex marriage,' I once again urge members of the Senate to stand strong in resisting this immoral and unnecessary proposition and to defend marriage and family as traditionally defined. We should be very clear about this: it is only with grave risk to our spiritual well-being and the common good of our society that we dare to redefine what God himself has created. My prayer is that the senators will have all the wisdom and courage they need to do the right thing in this moment of decision."

 Tellingly, while the Catholic Church was bashing gays and gay marriage, the Providence Chamber of Commerce's board chairman and two other business leaders said Monday legalizing same-sex marriage would remove one hurdle that makes it hard for R.I. businesses to compete.  And let's be candid about something.  God did not create marriage as we know it.  Its a much evolved institution - e.g., women are no longer deemed chattel property -  but still has much of its focus on property rights and controlling women and offspring.  It is a man made institution first and foremost and the Church got involved merely to increase its power and control over believers and non-believers alike.

 

The True Ugliness of "Biblical Marriage"

One of the arguments of the anti-gay forces that oppose LGBT equality and gay marriage in particular is that the laws must conform to reactionary religious dogma and that the civil laws should support "Biblical marriage."  It's a refrain that we hear over and over again by professional Christians/hate merchants like Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher, et al.  It's a main part of their propaganda campaign to win over the ignorant and simple minded.  However, in making their case, they leave out the details that demonstrate that Biblical is actually something very ugly and not something the civil laws should be supporting.  A piece in the Associated Baptist Press looks at what "Biblical marriage" really means.  It says that "Those who claim the biblical model for marriage is one man and one woman for life apparently haven’t been reading the Bible."  Here are excerpts:

Many Christians today speak about the traditional biblical marriage, but if truth be known, the traditional marriage is not a biblical concept. In fact, it would be hard to find a modern-day Christian who would actually abide by a truly biblical marriage in practice, as the biblical understanding of marriage meant male ownership of women who existed for sexual pleasure.

Upon marriage, a woman’s property and her body became the possession of her new husband. As the head of the household, men (usually between the ages of 18 and 24) had nearly unlimited rights over wives and children.

A woman became available for men’s possession soon after she reached puberty (usually 11 to 13 years old), that is, when she became physically able to produce children. Today we call such sexual arrangements statutory rape. The biblical model for sexual relationships includes adult males taking girls into their bedchambers, as King David did in 1 Kings 1:1-3.

Throughout the Hebrew text it is taken for granted that women (as well as children) are the possessions of men. The focus of the text does not seriously consider or concentrate upon the women’s status, but their identity is formed by their sexual relationship to the man: virgin daughter, betrothed bride, married woman, mother, barren wife or widow.

Her dignity and worth as one created in the image of God is subordinated to the needs and desires of men. As chattel, women are often equated with a house or livestock (Dt. 20:5-7), as demonstrated in the last commandment, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, wife, slave, ox or donkey” (Ex. 20:17).

Men could have as many sexual partners as they could afford. The great patriarchs of the faith, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Judah, had multiple wives and/or concubines, and delighted themselves with the occasional prostitute (Gen. 38:15). King Solomon alone was recorded to have had over 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

The book of Leviticus, in giving instructions to men wishing to own a harem, provides only one prohibition, which is not to “own” sisters (Lev. 18:18). The Hebrew Bible is clear that men could have multiple sex partners. Wives ensured legitimate heirs; all other sex partners existed for the pleasures of the flesh.  A woman, on the other hand, was limited to just one sex partner who ruled over her -- unless, of course, she was a prostitute.

Biblical marriage was considered valid only if the bride was a virgin. If she was not, then she needed to be executed (Dt. 22:13-21).

As much as we do not want to admit it, marriage is an evolving institution; a social construct that has been changing for the better since biblical times. Those who claim that the biblical model for marriage is one husband and one wife apparently haven’t read the Bible or examined the well-documented sources describing life in antiquity.  The sooner we move away from the myth of the so-called traditional biblical marriage, the better prepared we will be to discuss what constitutes a family in the 21st century.

Sadly, as seems to always be the case the self-congratulatory "godly Christians" are once again selectively picking and choosing what aspects of the Bible  are to be claimed as "inerrant" and which ones can be conveniently ignored.  Their lies and modern day Pharisee like hypocrisy is breath taking.